Excerpt
Excerpt: ?Love thy neighbor as thyself (Leviticus 19, 18).? Rabbi Akiva says: ?it is a great rule in the Torah.? This statement demands explanation. Because the word law (the word law in Hebrew also means whole - C.R.) indicates a sum of details that when put together form the above whole. It turns out that when he says about the mitzvah of ?love thy neighbor as thyself? that it is a great rule in the Torah, we must understand that all other 612 mitzvot (precepts) in the Torah with all their interpretations are no more and no less than the sum of the details inserted and contained in that single mitzvah of ?love thy neighbor as thyself?. This is quite perplexing, because you can say regarding precepts between a man and his fellow man, but how can that single precept support within it all the precepts between man and the Lord, which are the vast majority of the precepts?) And if we can still strain to find some way to reconcile their words, there comes before us a second saying, even more conspicuous, about a convert who came before Hillel and asked of him: ?teach me the whole of the Torah when I'm standing on one leg?. And he replied: ?anything that you hate do not do to your friend (the Aramaic translation of ?love thy neighbor as thyself?) ?, and the rest means: go study. Here before us a clear law (Halacha), that in all 612 precepts and all the writings in the Torah there is none that is preferred to ?love thy neighbor as thyself?, because they only aim to interpret and allow us to observe the precept of loving our neighbor unreservedly, since he specifically says - ?the rest means: go study?. Meaning that the rest of the Torah are interpretations of that one precept, which cannot be complete if not for them.